Ban guns?

"To ban guns because criminals use them is to tell the law abiding that their rights and liberties depend not on their own conduct, but on the conduct of the guilty and the lawless." 

          ~ attrib. Lysander Spooner

"Through all time, wherever mankind have attempted to live in peace with each other, both the natural instincts & the collective wisdom of the human race have acknowledged and prescribed, as an indispensable condition, obedience to this one only universal obligation: viz., that each should live honestly towards every other." #QotD

"The science of justice ... is the science of all human rights; of all a man’s rights of person and property; of all his rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
    "It is the science which alone can tell any man what he can, and cannot, do; what he can, and cannot, have; what he can, and cannot, say, without infringing the rights of any other person.
    "It is the science of peace; and the only science of peace; since it is the science which alone can tell us on what conditions mankind can live in peace, or ought to live in peace, with each other.
    "These conditions are simply these: viz., first, that each man shall do, towards every other, all that justice requires him to do; as, for example, that he shall pay his debts, that he shall return borrowed or stolen property to its owner, and that he shall make reparation for any injury he may have done to the person or property of another.
    "The second condition is, that each man shall abstain from doing so another, anything which justice forbids him to do; as, for example, that he shall abstain from committing theft, robbery, arson, murder, or any other crime against the person or property of another.
    "So long as these conditions are fulfilled, men are at peace, and ought to remain at peace, with each other. But when either of these conditions is violated, men are at war. And they must necessarily remain at war until justice is re-established.
    "Through all time, so far as history informs us, wherever mankind have attempted to live in peace with each other, both the natural instincts, and the collective wisdom of the human race, have acknowledged and prescribed, as an indispensable condition, obedience to this one only universal obligation: viz., that each should live honestly towards every other.
    "The ancient maxim makes the sum of a man’s legal duty to his fellow men to be simply this: 'To live honestly, to hurt no one, to give to every one his due.'
    "This entire maxim is really expressed in the single words, to live honestly; since to live honestly is to hurt no one, and give to every one his due."
          ~ Lysander Spooner, from his 1882 pamphlet on Natural Law

.

A “target”?

It’s said that taking part in the war against IS barbarians will make New Zealanders a “target.”

Because, supposedly, people are only a “target” for Islamic barbarians if the barbarians are attacked by the people’s governments.

Really?

Then why was a Japanese journalist executed by Islamic State thugs, when Japanese armies hadn’t left their shores since 1945?

Why is Islamic State calling for their followers to launch attacks against famously neutral Switzerland?

Why were New Zealanders in Bali a target for Jemaah Islamiyah fully a year before New Zealanders joined the war in Iraq?

Why were Australians, a year before that same war?

Not to mention several thousand entirely innocent bus and train riders in London and Madrid and office workers in New York.

You can keep asking questions like that, but the truth is non-Islamic countries and non-aggressive non-Islamic folk are not targets because they’re going to war with Islamists. Because they’re not.  And because the truth is much, much simpler, which is this: Islamists are going to war with us because we are non-Islamist.

That’s it. That’s it right there.

Because that’s the real message of their “religion of peace” – a message evident from the history of Islam, from its birth to its Barbary Coast bandits and right up to its modern-day barbarians --  that “peace” in their eyes is only possible after all who don’t follow their prophet are subdued.

Understand that, and you’ll understand you’re already a target anyway.

In Istanbul (and Constantinople):The Rise & Fall of Society

Guest post by Chris Mayer of “Capital and Crisis”

Istanbul, not Constantinople, as the song goes. In this history is an omen for any powerful state (read: the U.S.). A somewhat obscure essayist knew all about it back in 1959. His little book deserves wider circulation. Below, we'll take a look.
     Constantinople was once the seat of a vast, rich empire. As successor to Rome, under the name of Byzantium, it ruled over a land that stretched from the Caucasus to the Adriatic, from the Danube to the Sahara. The Dark Ages were only completely dark if you ignore the flourishing civilization on the Bosporus.
    Historian Merle Severy writes:

Medieval visitors from the rural West, where Rome had shrunk to a cow town, were struck dumb by this resplendent metropolis." There were half a million people here. Its harbours full of ships, "its markets filled with silks, spices, furs, precious stones, perfumed woods, carved ivory, gold and silver and enamelled jewellery.

    This civilization lasted for a thousand years.
Actually, it lasted for 1,123 years and 18 days after Roman Emperor Constantine made the city his new Christian Rome. On May 29, 1453, Constantinople fell to the Turks.

The Hagia Sophia -- once a cathedral, then a mosque,
now a museum -- the bones of a dead civilization.

    The city would serve as the seat of yet another great empire, the Ottoman. And this one would last nearly five centuries. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the Ottoman Empire was perhaps the most powerful state on Earth. It was at least on one heck of a roll. After Constantinople, the Ottomans took Athens in 1458. Then it was on to Tabriz (1514), Damascus (1516), Cairo (1517), Belgrade (1521), Rhodes (1522), Baghdad (1534), Buda (1541), Tripoli (1551) and Cyprus (1571).
    They almost took Vienna. The powers of Western Europe drew the line in the sand there. Just.  Interesting to think what would've happened if the Turks took Vienna. All of Western Europe would have been at their feet. If they had succeeded, perhaps the majority of Europeans would be answering the call to prayer, echoing from the minarets of cathedrals-turned-mosques...

Your author inside the courtyard of the famed Blue Mosque...

    Yet the Ottoman Empire, too, would crumble. It was constantly at war. By one historian's reckoning, the longest period of peace was just 24 years in nearly six centuries of reign.
    In 1923, with the founding of the Republic of Turkey, Ankara became the seat of government, and in 1930 Constantinople was renamed Istanbul. As historian John Freely notes: "For the first time in 16 centuries, the ancient city on the Golden Horn was no longer reigning over a world empire with only the presence of the monuments to remind one of its imperial past."
    It is not hard to think of the U.S. in the context of these great powers.

*** Enter Chodorov
    One of the books I had tucked in my bag that I read while in Turkey was Frank Chodorov's The Rise & Fall of Society. This is a slender 168-page book by a great, if somewhat forgotten, essayist and editor. It gives a tightly reasoned answer to the question "Why do societies rise and fall?"
    Chodorov's thesis is that "every collapse of which we have sufficient evidence was preceded by the same course of events."
   The course of events goes like this:

"The State, in its insatiable lust for power, increasingly intensified its encroachments on the economy of the nation..." and finally gets to the point where the economy can no longer support the state at the level it is accustomed to. Society can't meet the strain, so "society collapsed and drew the State down with it."

The pattern is always the same, regardless of size or ideology. The state can grow only by taking.

Since the State thrives on what it expropriates [Chodorov writes], the general decline in production which it induces by its avarice foretells its own doom.

    Chodorov bases much of his thesis on what he calls "the Law of Parsimony." In essence, it is simply that people try to get the most satisfaction with the least amount of effort. It is a natural law of human behaviour.
    The law does not say they always achieve this goal, of course. It simply says it is what people try to do. Cooperation with others enhances the ability to satisfy. "Sociability thrives on the mutual profits of cooperation," Chodorov writes, "and when we observe how an acquaintance ripens into friendship as the mutually created wage level rises, it is hard to tell which is cause and which is effect."  The marketplace is the binding of society and coexistent with it. No marketplace, no society. No society, no marketplace.
Now enter the state (whose origins Chodorov covers, but I will pass over here). The state is also made up of men. They, too, are subject to the law of parsimony. So they will make efforts to enlarge and better their position, which they can only do by confiscation (taxes, fines, etc.).

Rome had its make-work programs, its gratuities to the unemployed and its subsidies to industry [Chodorov writes]. These things are necessary to make confiscation palatable and possible.

    Another tourist hot spot, the Topkapi Palace, where the sultans lived decadently... at the expense of the taxpayers, of course.
    How, by various ways of obscurantism and promises, the state is able to grow ever larger and more powerful is the main narrative of the book. Chodorov's writing is honey smooth and his ideas reflect the learning and thought of a lifetime pondering such questions. (He was 72 at the time of publication.)
    Though the book is a slender, easy read, it is packed with ideas. Chodorov, long known as a great teacher, has a gift for stating ideas simply in well-turned phrases. (My copy has plenty of highlighted passages.) And his defence of the network of voluntary exchange that we call a marketplace is downright eloquent.
    One of my favourite chapters is "The Humanity of Trade." There he writes about how the markets make it possible that the fish of the sea reach the miner's table. Northerners enjoy tropical fruits because they can trade for them with goods and services that make life in the tropics easier.

It is by trade that the far-flung warehouses of nature are made accessible to all the peoples of the world, and life on this planet becomes that much more enjoyable. Trade not only improves our material wealth. Trade brings an influx of ideas, stories of interesting people and other cultures that in turn enrich our own literature, arts and 'operatic repertoire.

    Reading Chodorov, one can't help but marvel at the powers of voluntary social cooperation and exchange. Yet there is this never-ending cycle of the rise and collapse of societies. Can we break this depressing cycle?
Chodorov gives an answer in the last chapter, titled "One Can Always Hope." He writes: "None has as yet been discovered. Nevertheless, the search for a formula for the 'good society' has never been abandoned, hope being what it is, and out of the laboratory of the human mind has come congeries of utopias."
    A bleak ending, perhaps. But Chodorov leaves out the possibility that in the U.S., at least, it may be possible to impede the state. Americans still have "a folklore of freedom." This libertarian tradition may yet be revived. "It is worth a try," Chodorov writes. He ends his book with a sentence that captures the most critical idea of all: "The will for freedom comes before freedom."
    The Rise & Fall of Society is a little treasure of a book.  I have all of Chodorov's books -- The Income Tax: Root of All Evil, One Is a Crowd: Reflections of an Individualist, Out of Step: The Autobiography of an Individualist and the posthumous collection, Fugitive Essays. Chodorov is among my favourite libertarian writers, a list that includes Murray Rothbard, H.L. Mencken, Albert Jay Nock and Lysander Spooner. For whatever reason, I had never read The Rise & Fall, but it is classic Chodorov and worth a read.
You can pick up a copy here.
Or you can get Chodorov's The Rise & Fall of Society free, when you join the Club. Plus, you'll get every e-book ever published by Laissez Faire, as I've done, when you join here.

Istiklal Caddesi on a Tuesday afternoon, a bustling street of shops,
restaurants and plenty of people.

As I walked around Istanbul, admiring the architecture -- the bones of a lost civilization -- I still managed to feel optimistic. Life in Istanbul is, in fact, far better for the typical person than it was at the height of any of the dead empires. In material wealth, people live longer and far healthier lives today. They are literate and technologically more advanced. They have greater leisure and access to a wealth of ideas unimaginable in the old days.
This is despite the ugliness of states. And that, after all, is some consolation for the ideas of human progress and liberty.

Sincerely,
Chris Mayer
Editor, Capital & Crisis

Chris Mayer is managing editor of the Capital and Crisis and Mayer’s Special Situations newsletters, a contributor to the Daily Reckoning, and author of Invest Like a Dealmaker, Secrets of a Former Banking Insider.

The Victorian Bushfires: How Environmentalism Leads to Disaster

After the 2009 Victorian bushfires, which killed 209 people, Ben O’Neill (right) wrote this piece for the Mises Daily, where it first appeared. Nothing he describes has changed since, either politically or environmentally.

On February 7, 2009, and in the week that followed, bushfires ignited across Victoria, in Australia.[1] The fires raged through many towns, destroying at least 1,834 homes,[2] and killing at least 209 people,[3]more fatalities than any bushfire in Australian history.[4]

Let's compare: in the 1983 "Ash Wednesday" bushfires, seventy-five people died; in the 1939 "Black Friday" bushfires, seventy-one died; in all previous bushfires in Australia, back to data on bushfires in the 17th century, there were a total of 642 fatalities.[5] In short, Australia has just experienced what is far and away the most devastating bushfire in its history.

While the immediate causes of the various bushfires are thought to include arson, discarded cigarette butts, faulty power lines, or lightning strikes, these initial fires transformed into huge infernos and spread uncontrollably across Victoria only because of extremely high fuel loads throughout the state's bushland. The reason? For years, local governments have neglected to manage fire hazards on their land in order to be faithful to the principles of environmentalism — a philosophy that contends that nature has intrinsic value that must be preserved, regardless of any use it has to man.[6] The result has been that people have sacrificed their prosperity and even survival in an attempt to preserve the unspoiled sanctity of nature.

In the case of land management, environmentalists have invoked the alleged intrinsic value of nature to oppose the controlled burning of bushland, the clearing of vegetation and the prevention of excessive fire hazards in government-controlled land and adjacent private property. They have lobbied governments to prohibit the clearing of trees and shrubs and have been eternally hostile to all attempts to reduce the "bounty of nature" that has stoked the deadly fires that have spread across Victoria.

How Environmentalism Contributed to the Bushfires

Under the influence of the philosophy of environmentalism, as well as political pressure from environmentalist groups and an "environmentally conscious" electorate, local councils have refused for years to clear the vegetation that has now served as fuel for lethal infernos. The modus operandi of these bureaucrats and their ecosupporters has been to insist on "rigorous" environmental assessments, which in envirospeak means, assessments that continue until reasons have been found to prevent any interference with the natural state of public land. In addition to perpetually stalling any clearing of trees or vegetation, government councils have also prohibited people from clearing trees and vegetation from their own property, aggressively pursuing those who break environmental-protection laws that place the "welfare" of trees above the property rights and safety of people.

In 2002, Liam Sheahan, a resident of Reedy Creek in Victoria, was prosecuted for disregarding local laws and bulldozing approximately 250 trees on his own property to make a fire break next to his home.[7] Council laws prohibited Mr. Sheahan from clearing trees further than six meters away from his house, but he went ahead with his decision to create a 100 meter fire break. During the resulting prosecution, bushfire expert Dr. Kevin Tolhurst testified on Mr. Sheahan's behalf, telling the court that the clearing had reduced the fire risk to Mr. Sheahan's home from extreme to moderate. According to Mr. Sheahan, "The council stood up in court and made us to look like the worst, wanton environmental vandals on the earth. We've got thousands of trees on our property. We cleared about 247." Mr. Sheahan's prosecution cost him $100,000 in fines and legal fees, but when the bushfires swept through his town in February 2009, his actions were vindicated — his home was the only property left standing in a two-kilometer area, while neighboring properties were destroyed. His disregard for environmental laws saved his home and the lives of his family.

Warwick Spooner was not so lucky. His mother and brother were killed as the bushfires consumed their home in Strathewen in Victoria.[8] He was in no doubt as to why the tragedy had occurred, telling the Nillumbik council, "We've lost two people in my family because you dickheads won't cut trees down.… We wanted trees cut down on the side of the road, … and you can't even cut the grass for God's sake."[9] He was not the only one to express such frustrations, with another resident complaining to the council that her repeated requests to reduce vegetation growth on public land had been ignored.

In 2003, bushfire experts Rod Incoll and David Packham argued against planning regulations proposed to the council by environmentalist groups. These regulations, which were passed by the council, included restrictions against the removal of vegetation "and worse still, the requirement for planting vegetation around and almost over houses, as part of any planning permit to build a house in the shire of Nillumbik, so it gave the appearance from the outside of being a forest."[10]

Two weeks before the bushfires, Mr. Packham alerted Victorian residents to the critical fire conditions in the Victorian bush, warning them that bushfires could destroy between 1,000 and 2,000 homes and kill 100 people.[11] This frightening prediction may have sounded alarmist until hundreds were burned to death weeks later. During the fires, Mr. Packham followed up his predictions with an explanation of the carnage. He explained that fuel levels in public land had been allowed to reach dangerous levels due to environmentalist hostility to vegetation removal and controlled burning.

It has been a difficult lesson for me to accept that despite the severe damage to our forests and even a fatal fire in our nation's capital [the Canberra bushfires in 2003], the political decision has been to do nothing that will change the extreme threat to which our forests and rural lands are exposed.… It is hard for me to see this perversion of public policy and to accept that the folk of the bush have lost their battle to live a safe life in a cared-for rural and forest environment, all because of the environmental fantasies of outraged extremists and latte conservationists.[12]

Mr. Packham later branded environmentalists as "eco-terrorists waging a jihad" against prescribed burning, explaining that "[t]he green movement is directly responsible for the severity of these fires through their opposition to prescribed burning."[13]

As these incidents make clear, the negligent and authoritarian actions of local councils have contributed substantially to the severity of the Victorian bushfires. But they are the predictable consequence of a political atmosphere saturated with environmentalist philosophy, environmentalist lobby groups, and an electorate that views the Green party (Australia's third-largest political party) as a benign protest vote, ideal for showing their disaffection with the major political parties. Under such pressure, local councils are faithfully implementing the philosophy of environmentalism, which requires them to reduce humanity's "footprint" on nature, and tells them that the inherent value of non-conscious entities like trees and shrubs is more important than the desires of those rapacious human beings who plunder nature for their own selfish gain.

Response to The Bushfires by Government and Environmentalist Groups

Having failed to achieve damage control in the bushfires through proper land management, the response from government officials has been a predictable game of public-relations damage control. Councils have responded to fierce criticism of their aversion to land clearance and controlled burning with promises that they will reassess their planning and environmental policies. Such promises would sound more genuine if not for the fact that problems of insufficient fuel reduction and controlled burning on public land have been well known for decades. These problems having been highlighted extensively in previous bushfire inquiries, which are a recurring event in a country as prone to bushfires as Australia.[14] For Warwick Spooner, this latest promise of review was little comfort. He told Nillumbik Mayor Bo Bendtsen, "It's too late now mate. We've lost families, we've lost people."[15]

Any attempts to increase land clearing and controlled burning to prevent bushfire damage may also face greater constraints from federal environmental laws in the near future. The Department of Environment confirmed that they have received a public submission calling for controlled burning to be listed under federal law as a "key threatening process,"[16] defined as a process that "threatens, or may threaten, the survival, abundance or evolutionary development of a native species or ecological community."[17] Listing would require the minister to consider a threat-abatement plan for controlled burning, to find the most "feasible, effective and efficient way to abate the process."[18] Already listed as a key threatening process is land clearance, including "clearance of native vegetation for crops, improved, [sic] pasture, plantations, gardens, houses, mines, buildings and roads."[19]

Meanwhile, there is no sign of any self-examination by environmentalist groups. Rather than reconsider their cherished environmental-preservation laws, which have helped fuel the fires, environmentalists have taken the bushfires as an opportunity to selectively find evidence of human-induced global warming.[20]

Proponents of this theory have been eagerly pointing out that the bushfires occurred during a heat wave across southeast Australia that has caused record-high temperatures during the summer.

Referring to Australia's especially hot weather in the last twelve years, Climate Change Minister Penny Wong assured the public that "[a]ll of this is consistent with climate change, and all of this is consistent with what scientists told us would happen."[21] For obvious reasons, she did not comment on whether the simultaneous record low temperatures in other parts of the world — such as the United States,[22],[23] Canada,[24] England,[25] France, Italy, Germany,[26] and India[27] — are also "what scientists told us would happen."

Rather than simply removing coercive restrictions that have prevented private landowners from clearing trees on their own property, the government is set to respond to the bushfires by imposing new coercive restrictions. This time, private landowners will be prevented from having trees too close to their property.[28] Thus, having already seized sole power to remove trees and vegetation on private property (on the assumption that property owners are too evil or stupid to be trusted with these decisions) and having thereby forced Victorian residents into a disastrous inferno through their previous regulations, the government is convinced that it is the proper decision-making body to decide when property owners can plant trees.

While this kind of thinking demonstrates the government's boundless arrogance and insatiable desire for control, the danger posed to human life from public-land mismanagement runs much deeper than the specific environmental laws and policies currently in place, or even the laws to come. The root of the problem is the philosophy of environmentalism, which permeates all land-management decisions, guaranteeing hostility to any attempts to interfere with "the balance of nature." Despite having the legal power to undertake controlled burning on its land, the Yarra Ranges Shire in Victoria refused to do this for years before it was hit by the bushfires, instead calling for "rigorous" environmental assessments to determine the breeding seasons of local flora and fauna and the effect on endangered Leadbeater's possums.[29] So long as such considerations remain above concern for human life and liberty, there is little prospect of reducing the impact of natural disasters.

How Private Land Ownership Would Reduce Bushfire Risk

Because private ownership entails the right to control one's own property, and because some people may not wish to sacrifice their lives to prevent interference with local possums, environmentalists seek to achieve their goals through government ownership of land — land socialism. In this endeavor, they have been very successful. State forests, national parks, and other Crown land in Victoria make up approximately one third of the state but contributed four-fifths of the February 2009 bushfires.[30] And as with all examples of land socialism, the situation in Victoria has created an incentive structure that has destroyed accountability, thereby exacerbating the disaster.

As mere caretakers of public land, bureaucrats and local politicians are not liable for any loss caused by their mismanagement. Nor do they have any personal stake in its capital value. When property is destroyed due to their ineptitude and their enslavement to the philosophy of environmentalism, their savings are not in danger. If anyone is required to pay for compensation, it is taxpayers who have had nothing to do with the whole mess. For the local councilor or the state or federal politician, what matters is getting the green vote, showing how "environmentally conscious" they are, and placating all those green lobby groups and media darlings that might say nasty things about them if they don't toe the line.

Had the bushland areas in Victoria been private property, the owner of the land would be subject to a duty of care to his neighbors under tort laws and would be liable for any damage caused to his neighbors' properties by his own negligence. He certainly would not be able to claim as a defense the fact that his own environmental policies make it difficult for him clear vegetation or conduct controlled burning. And as a result, he would have a strong incentive to ensure that the land is properly managed, neither plundered of vegetation to the point that it loses its capital value, nor allowed to overgrow into a dangerous fire hazard.

Had these bushland areas been regarded as unowned land, ripe for homesteading, then adjacent property owners would have been able to clear fire breaks to their hearts' content, homesteading as much land as necessary for a safe buffer between themselves and the bushlands beyond.

Had the areas of private property adjacent to these bushlands been treated as genuine private property — unconstrained by coercive regulation — then adjacent property owners would have been able to clear trees and vegetation on their own land, and build facilities to cope with bushfires, without groveling for permission from their political masters. They would not have been inhibited by mountains of regulations and armies of bureaucrats who frustrated their attempts at safety. They certainly would not have been prohibited from clearing vegetation before the fire has burned them out and then prohibited from planting trees after the damage had already been done.

The danger of bushfires and other natural disasters is ever present, but it is not a danger that we must accept passively as an immutable act of nature. It is a danger that can be managed or exacerbated. And it is a danger that is currently exacerbated by the philosophy of environmentalism and the land socialism that is used to implement this philosophy. In describing the California bushfires in 2003, Lew Rockwell diagnoses the problem:

What went wrong? The problem is in the theory of environmentalism. Under it, ownership is the enemy. Nature is an end in itself. So it must be owned publicly, that is, by the state. The state, in its management of this land, must not do anything to it. There must not be controlled burning, brush clearing, clear cutting, or even tourism. We can admire it from afar, but the work of human hands must never intervene.
    Then the brush begins to gather. It piles higher and higher. Old growth rots. Uncontrolled growing leads to crowding. When the weather gets hot the stuff combusts. Then the winds blow and the fires spread. It's been the same story for several decades now, ever since the loony theory that nature should be left alone took hold.[31]

So long as governments remain under the sway of environmentalist philosophy and arrogate massive tracts of land to their own inept control, no amount of legal tinkering will prevent the next bushfire. How many more will die then?

Ben O'Neill is a lecturer in statistics at the University of New South Wales (ADFA) in Canberra, Australia. He has formerly practiced as a lawyer and as a political adviser in Canberra. He is a Templeton Fellow at the Independent Institute.

Notes
[1] The temperature in Melbourne reached 46.4°C (115.5°F), the highest temperature since records began 150 years ago. Other cities across Victoria also reached record temperatures. See Townsend, H. "City swelters, records tumble in heat," The Age, February 7, 2009.
[2] "Fair trial for accused arsonist," SBS World News Australia, February 14, 2009.
[3] "Victoria bushfire toll rises to 209," The Australian, February 20, 2009.
[4] Huxley, J. "Horrific, but not the worst we've suffered," Sydney Morning Herald, February 11, 2009.
[5] Ibid, Huxley (2009)
[6] See Berliner, M.S. (2007) "Against Environmentalism," Ayn Rand Institute.
[7] Baker, R. and McKensie, M. "Fined for illegal clearing, family now feel vindicated," The Age, February 12, 2009.
[8] Petrie, A. "Angry survivors blame council 'green' policy," The Age, February 11, 2009.
[9] Ibid, Petrie (2009).
[10] "Council ignored warning over trees before Victoria bushfires," The Australian, February 11, 2009
[11] Packham, D. "Victoria bushfires stoked by green vote," The Australian, February 10, 2009.
[12] Ibid, Packham (2009).
[13] Ibid, Ryan (2009).
[14] Less than six years prior to the Victoria bushfires, the McLeod Inquiry, which investigated the 2003 bushfires in Canberra, Australia, found that management of fuel loads in public forests was lacking. This finding was echoed in the subsequent coroner's report on the fires in 2006, which found that the ACT government had failed to follow recommendations for a rigorous back-burning process, and this resulted in heavy fuel loads, which fueled the fires. See Doogan, M. The Canberra Firestorm. ACT Coroner's Report, December 19, 2006, pp. 65–70.
[15] Ibid, Petrie (2009).
[16] Ryan, S. "Burnoffs following Victoria bushfires a 'threat to biodiversity'," The Australian, February 12, 2009.
[17] Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (Cth), s 188(3).
[18] Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts.
[19] Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts.
[20] This is a familiar pattern. For discussion of global-warming claims during the 2007 California fires, see Anderson, W. "Fires of the Feds: How the Government has Destroyed Forests," Mises Daily, October 25, 2007.
[21] "Heatwave a sign of climate change: Wong," ABC News, January 29, 2009.
[22] Gunter, L. "Forget global warming: Welcome to the new Ice Age," National Post, February 25, 2008.
[23] Evans, C. "Baby, it's cold outside," Daily Camera, January 6, 2009.
[24] Cold weather records shattered in 6 Manitoba towns. CBC News, January 13, 2009.
[25] Record cold weather payouts triggered as temperature hits -11C. Times Online, January 6, 2009.
[26] Donahue, P. and Viscusi, G. "Central Europe, France, U.K., Italy Hit by Cold Air," Bloomberg, January 6, 2009.
[27] "Poor burn books to stay warm in chilly India, 55 dead," Reuters India, January 5, 2009.
[28] Rolfe, P. "Building standards to be lifted," The Herald Sun, February 15, 2009.
[29] Ibid, Ryan (2009).
[30] Ibid, Ryan (2009).
[31] Rockwell Jr, L.H. "Land Socialism: Playing with Fire," Mises Daily, October 24, 2007

DOWN TO THE DOCTOR’S: Spooner, schools & silly season

Libertarianz leader Dr Richard McGrath ransacks the newspapers for stories and headlines on issues affecting our freedom.

This week: Spooner, schools and the silly season

1. (CHRISTCHURCH PRESS) “Sack Auckland Grammar board” – President of the teachers union attacks ‘Education’ Minister for not sacking and throwing into leg-irons Auckland Grammar School headmaster John Morris, the board of trustees, its pupils, the parents of its pupils and anyone who lives in the Grammar zone after Morris’s “brazen attack on the NCEA.”
   THE DOCTOR SAYS: This is typical. When politicians don’t act “decisively” or show “leadership” by failing to silence dissent, or by choosing not to interfere in the business affairs of New Zealanders, they are not lauded as principled but instead are criticized as “timid.” The minute a school principal takes a stand against their beloved NCEA, the teachers union shrieks that not only is NCEA the perfect tool for assessing all students, but that it should be made compulsory! After all, as Helen Clark once said, the State is sovereign. Individuals don’t matter, but The People do.
       It shows just how threatened the teachers union feel by the actions of John Morris. Their frothing union leader, Kate Gainsford, describes the Cambridge exam preferred by Auckland Grammar as “colonial” and smacks the board of Auckland Grammar for marketing themselves and promoting themselves as “better than everyone else.” Gainsford calls in the cavalry, principals of two secondary schools who will march lockstep behind the union leader, baying “Cambridge bad, NCEA good!”
       Well, Ms Gainsford, did it occur to you that perhaps AGS is better than other schools? Marketing yourself as better than the competition is what happens in the world of private enterprise. But then, being a left-wing trade unionist protected by extensive pro-union legislation, what would you know about open competition or free markets?    
   
2. (NZ HERALD) “Lawn mower rage ends race” - Rival mower riders traded punches after a side-on shunt at the end of the ride-on lawnmower race . . .
   THE DOCTOR SAYS: Who knew lawnmower racing had an ugly underbelly? You know it’s silly season when a stoush between drivers at a ride-on-lawnmower race at the Lake Hayes A&P show makes the headlines of Granny Herald.
   
3. (DOMPOST) “Take up dancing, mayor tells councillors” - Green Wellington mayor Celia Wade-Brown is promoting ballroom dancing to her councillors to improve their performance. . .
   THE DOCTOR SAYS: What is it about Greens and dancing? After all, it increases people’s CO2 emissions, so therefore must be BAD BAD BAD. Well, I guess it’s marginally better than the folk dancing that took place at a Green Party conference, and of which Russel Norman was unaware as Bob Jones reported a few years back. Perhaps later we might see a TV show starring the Wellington City Councillors—titled, perhaps, Dancing With The Despots?
   
4. And finally, a tribute to our Libertarian of the day: Lysander Spooner – born this day in 1808; described as an individualist anarchist, libertarian, political philosopher, Deist, abolitionist, supporter of the labour movement and entrepreneur. Read all about his efforts to compete with the U.S. Post Office, and how the state crushed him. And enjoy his perceptive quote, which from this day forth (or even fifth) will grace this new year’s column:

A man is none the less a slave because he is allowed to
choose a new master once in a term of years.
- Lysander Spooner